Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  It is certain and most noteworthy that all words that we are accustomed to from childhood, of whatever origin and kind they are, always awaken in us a throng of concomitant ideas, which come from the vivacity of the impressions that accompanied such words at that age, and from the richness of the child’s imagination. Their effects, and the ideas they give rise to, are tied to these words in such a way that while they may last more or less vividly and in greater or lesser numbers, they last an entire life. So it is certain that these concomitant ideas surrounding a single word, and the tiniest parts of its actual meaning, vary according to the individual. And so there probably isn’t anybody in whom the same word (I mean of the kind described above) produces an idea that is exactly [1706] the same as one that is produced in someone else, just as there is no nation whose words expressing one and the same object will not have some slight diversity of meaning from those of other nations. This effect of our early childish ideas surrounding words to which children are accustomed extends also to the new and different uses of the same words made by writers or poets, to words that are analogous in whatever way (whether by derivation, or simple resemblance, etc.), to those that we grew accustomed to as children, etc. etc., and so it has a bearing on almost the whole of one’s own language, even that which is the most rich, and least capable of being well known by children. (15 Sept. 1821.)

  From the observations above (pp. 1705–706), which can be greatly, philosophically, extended, deduce that perhaps no individual (like no nation in relation to others) has precisely the same idea as another concerning the most identical thing. And as reason depends on and is entirely determined and modified by the way in which things are conceived, [1707] so (1) you will explain the very different ways in which men reason, the very different opinions and consequences that they draw from things, and also actual differences of taste, custom, etc. etc. etc.; (2) you will observe to what extent we should trust in reason, and believe in absolute truth, when the same can be said of this truth that we believe to be universally recognized as can be said of material objects. Different viewpoints see the same object in very different perspectives (see two of my thoughts in this regard [→Z 1437–38, 1623]), but since they experience the same difference in seeing the perspectives, any sense of difference disappears, and it is impossible to detect and define it. Thus, men have very different ideas about the same thing, but as they express the thing with the same word, and differ also in their understanding of the word, this second difference conceals the first. They think they are in agreement, and are not, etc. etc. etc. A very important thought, since it should refer not only to material ideas, but much more [1708] so to abstract ones (which in the end all derive from matter), and to the very foundations of our reason. Much more then to ideas of beauty, grace, etc. (15 Sept. 1821.)

  From what I have said elsewhere [→Z 1531–33] about Machiavelli, Galileo, etc., who strove to destroy their own fame, one can confirm and extend Cicero’s dictum on glory, in Scipio’s Dream.1

  And from the distinction I drew there between the fame of men of letters and that of men of science this observation may be deduced. Truth is unchangeable, tastes are very changeable indeed. It might look as though the state of the sciences should be more constant than that of literature, and the fame of men of science more durable than that of men of letters. And yet exactly the opposite is the case. The sciences (as they say) are perfected over time, and literature is corrupted. One century destroys the science of the century just past; literature remains motionless. Or if it changes, it soon recognizes that it is corrupt, and returns to the past. What then is more stable, nature or reason? And what is this pretension of ours to know the truth? The ancients imagined they knew it just as we do. What is truth itself? What are the absolute verities? When we are not at all sure [1709] that the next century will not cast doubt on what we regard as certain. Indeed, looking at the example of all past centuries, and our own, we are sure of the opposite. (15 Sept. 1821.)

  Rocca says that the Spanish in the recent war did not scruple, rather they felt themselves obliged publicly or privately to go back on their word with the French, to betray them anyhow, to repay their individual favors by seeking to kill the benefactor, etc. etc. Likewise all natural peoples. And he relates this of the peasants in particular.1 Hence deduce (1) what supposed natural law, the universal duties of man toward his fellows, the law of nations, even enemy ones, are (and note that natural man is an enemy to every other man).2 (2) What the nature and system of national hatred characteristic of all unrefined peoples, and hence of the ancients, are. Further observe the supremely religious disposition of the Spanish, which, however, did not suffice to distort their natural inclinations, and the precepts of that which they considered to be the author, etc., of the moral code,3 no matter how much the Christian religion may be a kind of civilization, just as it is its daughter. (15 Sept. 1821.)

  [1710] Universal love, even of our enemies, which we deem to be natural law (and it is indeed the basis of our moral code, just as it is of the evangelical law insofar as it concerns man’s duties to man, which is as much as to say, the duties of this world), not only was unknown to the ancients but was contrary to their opinions, as also to those of all uncivilized or half-civilized peoples. But because we are accustomed to think of it as a duty from when we were children thanks to the civilization and religion that raise us in this opinion from early infancy, even before the use of reason, we regard it as innate. Thus, what derives from habituation and teaching seems to us to be congenital, spontaneous, etc. This was not the basis of any of the ancient law codes, nor of any other modern law code, save among civilized peoples. Jesus Christ said to the Jews themselves that he was giving them a new precept, etc. The ethos of Judaic law not only did not contain love, it contained hatred toward whoever was not Jewish. The Gentile, [1711] that is, the stranger, was the enemy of that nation. It was neither obliged nor counseled even to attract strangers to its own religion, to enlighten them, etc. etc. Its sole obligation was to repulse them when attacked, indeed very often to attack them, to have no dealings with them. The precept “diliges proximum tuum sicut te ipsum” [“thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself”]1 was understood to refer not to your fellow beings but to your fellow nationals. All the social obligations of the Jews were restricted to their own nation.

  Now, my question is, if the moral code that God gave us through his Word2 was, as we say, the true one, and if God is not only its type and cause, but also its necessary cause, when he himself gave a very different moral code, and one that was almost the reverse of this in utterly crucial points, was he then acting against his own essence? There’s no question of it. Not even one minimal article from our moral code, assuming it to be eternal, and independent of circumstances, could ever for any reason be omitted, or varied in any law that God gave to [1712] any man, whether isolated or in society. And conversely, no article of this law could in any circumstances be omitted, etc., in our own. Much less could the actual spirit of the Divine law and moral code ever vary from the beginning of the world until now, as indeed it evidently has varied. Whatever the theologians may say in order to explain, in order to reconcile, everything is in the end reducible to these terms, and one must perforce agree that God not only is the type and cause, but also the author, source, lord, and arbiter of the moral code, and this latter, and all its most abstract principles, derive absolutely, not from the essence, but from the will of God, who defines the moral rules, and according to those that he has defined and created, according to the manner in which he maintains, changes, or modifies them, he lays down, maintains, changes, or alters his laws. He is the creator of the moral code, of good and evil, and of the abstract idea of these, as of all the rest. (16 Sept. 1821.)

  Plato’s system of ideas preexisting things, existing in themselves, eternal, necessary, independent both of things and of God [1713] not only is not chimerical, bizarre, whimsical, arbitrary, and fantastical but is such that we marvel at an ancient having been able
to attain to the ultimate depths of abstraction, and we see where our opinion regarding the essence of things was leading, and our opinion regarding the abstract nature of the beautiful and the ugly, the good and the bad, the true and the false. Plato discovered, as is indeed the case, that our opinion regarding things—which holds them indubitably to be absolute, which regards affirmations, and negations, as absolute—was not, nor ever will be able to salvage itself other than by positing some images and causes for all that exists, which are eternal, necessary, etc., and independent of God himself, because otherwise (1) one would have to seek the cause for God, who, if the beautiful, the good, the true, etc., are neither absolute nor necessary, would have no cause for being, or for being in this or that guise, (2) supposing, however, that he had one, all that we believe to be absolute and necessary would have no other cause but the will of God, [1714] and so the beautiful, the good, and the true, which man supposes to have an abstract, absolute, independent existence, would only be such because God willed them to be, being able to will them to be otherwise, and opposite. Now, once the ideas of Plato have been found to be false1 and not subsisting, it is most certain that any absolute affirmation and negation collapses of its own account, and it is a wonder that we have destroyed the former without in any way doubting the latter. (16 Sept. 1821.)

  When a man is in a certain habit of thinking and reflecting, which comes about because he has thought and reflected, for whatever reason, every tiny accident and sensation of the day, even the most disparate, causes him to reflect. When he has lost this, so to speak, current habit, even if there is no notable cause, as often happens (and a night’s sleep is enough to turn him away from it for the following day), but especially if for whatever reason he has contracted a slight, ephemeral habit of distraction, the most serious circumstances of life and the most extraordinary sensations very often do not suffice to promote reflection. This effect and difference [1715] is much more noteworthy in different, but more deeply rooted habits of distraction or reflection that the same person contracts and loses by turns, and still more in different people even though their intellectual capacity is absolutely the same. (16 Sept. 1821.)

  Illusions cannot be condemned, despised, and persecuted save by those who are deluded and by those who believe that this world is or truly can be something, and something beautiful. An utterly crucial illusion, and so the half-philosopher combats illusions precisely because he is deluded; the true philosopher loves them and proclaims them because he is not deluded,1 and combating illusions in general is the surest sign of very imperfect and insufficient wisdom, and notable illusion. (16 Sept. 1821.)

  The individual, ordinarily, is as big or as little as the society, the body, etc., the country to which he particularly belongs, or imagines himself, aspires to, seeks to belong to. In a small country, men are small, unless extraordinarily happy institutions and opinions enlarge it, as in the Greek cities, each [1716] of which was a country. But the principal means is to extend as much as possible, if not in any other way, the idea of one’s own society, as each Greek city and their individuals regarded (also in practice) the whole of Greece and its possessions as their country, and whoever was not βάρβαρος [barbarous] as their compatriot. Without this, Greece would not have been what it was, not even in those days that so befitted greatness. (16 Sept. 1821.)

  The most faltering memory forgets the past instant, and remembers the things of childhood. This means that memory loses the faculty of habituation (which is what it consists of), and retains past recollections, because it has long been habituated to them. It loses the faculty of habituation, but not already contracted habits, if they are firmly rooted, etc. etc. etc. (16 Sept. 1821.)

  Quickness is none other than liveliness. Liveliness is pleasing (and for the reason see p. 1684, end); so quickness is, too. So that the pleasure man normally feels at the sight of birds (examples of quickness and vivacity, especially if he contemplates them from close up), belongs to the most intimate inclinations [1717] and qualities of human nature, that is the inclination to life. (16 Sept. 1821.) See p. 1725.

  “Μελέτη τὸ πᾶν”: “Everything is exercise.” The chief apophthegm of Periander, one of the Seven, he himself as wise as this saying.1 (16 Sept. 1821.)

  Someone who is not accustomed to paying attention and learning will never learn. Peasants struggle for years to memorize half a page of the catechism, the Credo, etc. Certainly you will find peasants with good memories, and many have the will to learn. But no faculty without habituation, and the best memory in every other respect does not have the capacity to carry out operations in which it is not practiced. The same goes for the intellect. Aside from the fact that country people do not have an adequate general habituation of memory that would make it easy for them to apply it to the different kinds of particular habituations, nor of the intellect that would make it easy for them to pay attention, without which faculty (which is also acquired) there is no memory. (16 Sept. 1821.)

  [1718] The small child does not recognize people it has seen only once or seldom, unless they have some extraordinary distinguishing feature that strikes the child’s imagination. He will readily confuse someone he barely knows with another or others that he does know, a part of his village which he does not know well with the part he lives in, another house with his own, another village with his own, etc. etc. etc. And yet even the most distracted of men, the one least accustomed to paying attention, the most forgetful, etc., recognizes someone he has seen only once at first sight, distinguishes new people from the ones he knows at first sight, etc. etc. etc. (These effects should be distinguished in proportion to the different extent to which children’s organs can be habituated, the differences in strength of their imagination, which makes sensations more or less intense.) Apply this observation to proving that the faculty of paying attention, and therefore that of remembering, both stem precisely from general habituation. Apply it also to my theory of beauty [→Z 1184–201], of which I maintain that the child has a very faint idea, doesn’t distinguish it from ugliness to start with, doesn’t know or discern merit or defect in this regard, unless it is blindingly obvious, etc. etc. etc. (17 September 1821.)

  [1719] How much influence the body has over the soul. A habit of activity or energy contracted by the body for whatever reason imparts activity, energy, promptness, etc., to the mind also, even one that is least exercised in itself. And since this habit may be ephemeral and passing, so too the effect very often lasts just a day, and even only a few hours. This observation can be greatly extended, both in itself and if you apply it to other kinds of bodily habituation and habit, whether constant or passing, that equally produce a similar habituation or habit or faculty in the spirit, even though the mind has nothing to do with and plays no part in the bodily habit. As, for example, if I today, without reflecting or taking thought, find myself in a situation in which I have to act and exercise a lot both corporeally and materially. Many instances of this could be adduced, both individual and also national, and serving to account for many different characters of different peoples. (17 Sept. 1821.)

  [1720] The truths contained in my system will certainly not be generally accepted, because men are accustomed to thinking otherwise, and in the opposite manner, nor are there many to be found who follow Descartes’s precept: “the friend of truth must doubt everything once in his life.”1 A precept of fundamental importance for the progress of the human spirit. But if the truths that I establish should have the good fortune to be repeated, and minds become accustomed to them, they will be believed not so much because they are true but because of habituation. That is how it has always happened. No opinion, true or false but contrary to the dominant and general opinion, has ever been established in the world instantaneously, and by virtue of a lucid and palpable demonstration, but by virtue of repetitions and hence of habituation. Jeered at to start with, today they hold sway, or have long held sway. Very often defeated by the obstacles placed in their way by dominant opinion, and
abandoned and neglected, they have then been copied, or else invented over again by other more fortunate men, when different circumstances [1721] allowed their opinions to be repeated in such a fashion that, with ears and minds having become habituated to them, and children having begun to be trained in them, they were established, and established in such a way that the opposite opinions came to be considered idle dreams, whether ancient and past or new and bold, etc. All that simply serves to confirm my system, which has faculties, opinions, inclinations, human reason, etc., consist in habituation. (17 Sept. 1821.) See p. 1729.

  Only with arrogance can one live in the world. If you do not wish or know how to use arrogance, others will use it against you. So be arrogant. The same goes for imposture. (17 Sept. 1821.)

  For p. 1665. The effects this person experienced with regard to sounds he also experienced with regard to singing. He was ordinarily only moved by huge stentorian and big-chested voices, or sometimes by some particular voices that suited his ear. The same distinction I have drawn [→Z 155–58, 1663–66] between the effects of harmony and those of sound [1722] as sound needs also to be drawn in relation to song, for just the voice of someone singing is very different from that of someone talking. And nature has given to human singing (I mean independently of harmony and modulation) a marvelous power over the soul of man, one greater than that of sound. (Likewise, it will have given it to the singing of birds (1) over birds of the same species, (2) then proportionately over other birds, and other analogous species, and even over us. And conversely, human singing has much less effect upon the beasts than sound does. All this is independent of harmony and propriety.) Indeed, when performed by a terrible voice, the most beautiful melody does not move us, no matter how well performed it may be, and conversely, you will feel yourself to be extraordinarily touched when a singer with a beautiful, soft, etc., voice first opens his mouth, and performs the most frivolous, the least expressive, or the most abstruse, etc., melody, and even performs it badly, and sings flat. And the actual effect of voices that are called beautiful is relative and varies with the different relationships of the different qualities of voices with the organs [1723] of different listeners. All this should serve as proof that beauty is relative in everything, not only abstractly, but also once this thing has come into being, and that very many things believed to be beautiful, and called so, do not pertain to the beautiful, but to the general inclination, whether individual or particular, to the disposition of the organs, etc., to pleasure as pleasure, arbitrarily or as a consequence of their other dispositions as ordained by nature, etc. etc. (17 Sept. 1821.) See p. 1758, beginning.